Letters Between Mental Soldiers
by NecroBrits
Summary: (Dear Now-United States of America,): However, the difference is - I didn't win. (Sincerely, the United Kingdom of Great Britain).


**Letters Between Mental Soldiers**

* * *

**Dear Arthur Kirkland, **

**It's the United States of America, sending you another letter!**

**And I do mean **_**another**_**. **

**How come you never answer, Arthur? Now that I think of it, you've never really written back. I see you're well, but you don't ever show it. When was the last time we had a nice conversation going? This isn't even face to face, it's pen and paper.**

**Surely you can take the time to open it and read my messages?**

**I don't know what's up with you. I thought you needed time, but it's been practically a century - and I mean this literally. **

**I want to be your friend again. Canada tells me not to say that anymore, that I'm not a child, but I don't think I should be all proper and formal with you. I know you tried to get me to be like that, but that isn't me. I'm me. I'm my own country. **

**Don't forget it.**

**But that doesn't mean I'm your enemy.**

**So why do you treat me like one?**

**Sincerely, Alfred Jones, the US of A!**

* * *

**Dear Arthur Kirkland,**

**It's been a couple months, and no reply. I shouldn't expect much - after all, even if you have written back, it would take a while to get here from that land mass of yours stranded in the Atlantic Ocean. But when I used to wait, I'd wait years, and I'm kind of tired of it. I don't want to wait years for something that isn't on its way. **

**So I thought that I might as well send one every month.**

**A week ago, I met France at one of the southern ports, mostly being used for trading cotton lately. The South...hasn't been too happy with me in recent times. He was there talking with South Carolina. Again. I don't know what's going on, and he won't tell. He looks uncomfortable around me, now. **

**Aside from that, though, I asked him about you and how you've been. He said that you were grumpy, which means you're healthy, which is good. I asked about the letters, and he kind of look confused. This leads me to believe that you haven't been getting these? I might have to stop writing, if that's the case. I guess I should have already stopped writing at this point in time, but it's become somewhat of a habit now.**

**I guess I might have had a weird look on my face, I don't know, but I wasn't feeling anything so don't even think that! Well, I had a look one way or another as I was thinking about how you might never have gotten any letter of mine, and he looked at me with pity.**

**Pity. I must have gotten it from you, but I don't like pity. I don't want pity. Most of all, though, I don't like **_**guilty **_**pity. **

**You know, the kind you get when someone knows they just lied to you, and it makes you more sad than if they had told the truth?**

**Sincerely, Alfred Jones, the US of A!**

* * *

**Dear England,**

**Hey, England. How have you been?**

**I've not been doing so well. South Carolina is really, really pissed at me. Enough that it's to the point where in Congress, one of his guys was a bit...violent.**

**It's not only him, either. I think his neighbours are mad, too. Which would technically make the entire south mad at me.**

**Yeah, I know, you're probably going to lecture me on how I even get my own country to hate me, but you're right. I even kind of miss those lectures. I never actually paid attention, but I like the sound of your voice. I wonder how it'd sound now? It's been almost a hundred years.**

**I guess all I'm good for is splitting away.**

**Sincerely, Alfred Jones, the US of A.**

* * *

**Dear Great Britain,**

**Hello! **

**Sorry for skipping a month of writing letters. I got really sick. I'm still sick, actually. But I felt bad for forgetting to write you a letter.**

**Since now I know you read them. I'm not stupid. France may be a good actor, but I've spent as much time around him as I've spent around you.**

**Canada's avoiding me. France has been hanging out with, literally, only the south. I've heard they're trying to recruit him. As an ally.**

**He's already supposed to be an ally of the United States. **

**He trades with them. So do you. Even if I don't see you, you never officially dropped trading with me (which would be kind of drastic, don't you think?). **

**I feel like I'm being torn apart. God, it hurts, and thanks to you, it's not only physical pain I feel.**

**Sincerely, Alfred Jones, the US of A?**

* * *

**Dear Great Britain,**

**Please, just respond back. France is gone. Thank God he isn't allying up with the South, but ever since he left it feels more painful. My abdomen is constantly hurting, in a way that it feels like it's being burned. Put on a stake and hung over the fire. My legs feel weaker than they did before. I can breathe fine, and my head is okay, but nothing else on my physical body feels right.**

**I've never experienced this before. Only cramps here and there. Maybe some aches. A couple of times I've gotten the fever from it. **

**The South is a word to be capitalised, now. **

**Even my own people want nothing to do with me, because guess what? They're gone. **

**But I'm sending my troops. I'm getting them back. Like hell will I become the Ununited States of America!**

**I can't let my own land just up and leave. They joined me in a union and they will stay with me, in a union. They cannot leave for a bunch of people in chains. They are so desperate to imprison another human being that they won't stop to consider the happiness of those that are free, and the views of those who are trapped.**

**Sincerely, Alfred Jones, the A?**

* * *

**Dear Great Britain,**

**I heard you've been getting news of my place over there. Then again, the South hates me even more because of it, ever since I've been blocking off their trade with you and France. **

**I can lead my men into battle, but not right now. I've been burning. I can't move, or this unbearable pain strikes me. Canada is writing this for me right now, but you can probably tell by his hand writing.**

**I've, instead, been having President Lincoln hire generals for me. But they're killing my men, and it just hurts even more. It won't stop hurting. The South is still part of me, but they're trying to rip away and it's as if - as if -**

**I don't know what it's like, because I can't compare it. Have you felt this way before, friend (enemy?)? **

**I can't tell if you have, because you won't write back.**

**Sincerely, Alfred Jones, the North.**

* * *

**Dear Great Britain,**

**Yesterday was September 17, and I fainted. When I woke up again, it was as if a dead weight had settled over me and stayed there. As if my skin were dying. Canada's face is grave, and remains grave and emotionless as he listens to my words and writes in that strangely neat scrawl of his. He isn't even showing emotion to my words as he writes about, basically, himself.**

**I've heard you have better doctors over there through what the media is saying, and the small snippets of mutterings I hear from Canada. No doctor is tending for me. They don't honestly know I even exist. They've been sent to the battle grounds, but still I feel my men dying.**

**It won't stop! I feel as if I'm going insane! As if a darkness of hostility just clouds my mind, and every time it does, I black out.**

**I miss when you were there and I got hurt. Remember that? You'd be frantic, and run around as if I were about to die if I so much got a scratch. I laugh, because would you look at me now? I certainly don't know where you are now, and I don't expect you to ever tell me.**

**Alfred Jones, Northern soldier.**

* * *

**Dear Great Britain,**

**Have you heard? They're calling it the war of Northern Aggression! Northern Aggression! A fucking war of Northern Aggression!**

_**Who are the ones keeping people in chains, and killing others for that power?**_

**That's all it has to be - they're just power hungry! Fuck economy, I don't care!**

**Fuck everything! I'm getting them back, and that's final, I'm not letting myself continue with this agony! I have to suck it up because there's no one here to endure it but me!**

**Alfred Jones**

**(I'm so sorry, I'm really really sorry, England. America keeps calling you Arthur and then yelling at himself and calling you by your country name again, and now he's muttering and drifting in and out of sleep and I caught him crying, once. He's in so much pain, and I don't know what to do, but I don't want to reject him these letters, but I also don't want you to get them because France has told me the reason you haven't been answering, but I also don't know how to solve it- I'm really, very very sorry.)**

* * *

"What is that?" came a raspy groan and the blinking of sleep blurred eyes.

"What is what?"

"That."

Matthew froze as his fingers nearly fisted a certain very neat sheet of parchment paper.

"It's a letter."

"From whom?"

Alfred's voice was fading, Matthew could tell. It was barely coming out, as if his throat had been closed and someone was choking out his voice. Matthew shrugged, hoping he looked nonchalant. "France," he said, thanking all Heavens that his voice didn't shake as it often did when he told a lie.

"France," Alfred repeated, and Matthew felt his gut lurch as Alfred's eyes closed again, and he fell back on the covers as if he were limp. "Okay, tell him I said hi," was all he bothered to say, before his breathing evened out.

Matthew softly padded out of the room, letter clutched in his hands, and he swore he could hear a small, muffled noise behind the door after he closed it softly behind him.

* * *

**Dear Great Britain,**

**You know what? I don't need you. I don't know if you can read this or not, but who ever cares now. Canada is back in the territory he belongs in, and I will write my own letters and send my own letters even if it's my personal torture, because it's something and I'm fucking independent now. I don't need someone caring for me.**

**But everyone's still dying. Everyone is dying and it's just passed the three year mark of this God forsaken war. **

**How many thousand? How could you just leave me here? Why won't you **_**help?**_

**The North.**

* * *

**I won't let them leave.**

**The North.**

* * *

There weren't very many things Arthur added into his day after a meeting. The meetings weren't really meetings, as they were pretty much only with the rest of Great Britain including France, but he didn't have anything else to call them by, even if it wasn't a particularly concrete-scheduled thing.

But there was one place he, sub-consciously or not, had added into his routine every couple of months.

There it was. Shining paper texture and all. He grasped the print in his fingers and let his eyes scan hungrily over the front of the page.

**AMERICAN UNION WINS CIVIL WAR.**

Arthur paused for a moment, just a moment, before releasing a breath he hadn't known he was holding. He was unsure of where he stood. There was one side of him that desperately wanted Alfred to feel what he felt, understand him a little more.

But there was, of course, as always, that tiny corner of his soul that wanted nothing more than to see a certain wheat haired child sit on the grass and simply laugh.

He touched the pocket of his shirt softly, unintentionally, feeling the rough texture of paper peeking out of the shirt just a bit. It was the last letter received by Arthur, quite a few months ago, and the absence of more had truly concerned him. He ran his thumb over his shirt, imagining the words sketched onto the paper.

"Now you know how I feel," he whispered, before borrowing a tool from the newspapers man standing beside him and writing briefly, quickly, onto the back of the letter. He handed back the random writing utensil to the man before dashing off, the back of his jacket slapping against the wind.

* * *

Alfred was sleeping when Matthew walked in, his formal clothing fit for a purposeful walk through the city, and slipped an envelope onto the table beside his head.

* * *

**Dear Now-United States of America,**

**However, the difference is - I didn't win.**

**Sincerely, the United Kingdom of Great Britain**

* * *

_A/N:_

_Yes, civil war setting. I had this little idea that England didn't start getting over the separation for a long time, because during this time, they weren't having a whole lot of involvement with each other, unlike modern day politics and media. Travelling took so much time, and contacting just as much, that it didn't seem worth it when he was already hurt._

_I wrote this in roughly thirty minutes because of an intense urge to write and a mini plot bunny. If there are major errors, please tell me! Other than that, read, review, and enjoy!_

_(Reviews make me write more. I check for reviews every day, multiple times a day, because I get excited about hearing from people. So, honestly, if you have a second, just drop a little comment and I assure you I'll see it!)_


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